Electronic distribution of information has gained importance with the proliferation of personal computers and wide area networks such as the Internet. With the widespread use of the Internet, it has become possible to store and distribute large, coherent units of information, such as books, using electronic technologies. Books and other media in electronic format are commonly referred to as electronic books (“eBooks”) or digital works.
Typically, digital works are structured as virtual frames presented on a computing device, and a user may turn or change from one virtual frame or “page” of electronic content to another. The term “page” as used herein refers to a collection of content presented at one time on a display. Thus, “pages” as described herein are not fixed permanently, and may be redefined or repaginated based on variances in display conditions, such as screen size, font type or size, margins, line spacing, resolution, or the like. Due in part to the variable nature of such “pages,” users may find it difficult to gauge their progress through the digital work. This problem is compounded by the fact that digital works may be displayed and read on a variety of different computing devices (e.g., computer monitors, portable digital assistants (PDAs), pocket computers, specialized eBook reader devices, etc.), under a variety of different display conditions (e.g., screen size and resolution, font type and size, margins, line spacing, etc.).
Accordingly, there remains a need to improve a reader's ability to navigate within a digital work and to better identify his or her location within the content of the digital work.